What order should I pick finishes in?

The order, and why it is that order

1. 1Tile or stone. Limited palettes, long lead times, and the thing you will be looking at longest.
2. 2Cabinets. Colour and door style, which have to sit with the tile.
3. 3Countertops, chosen against the cabinets with a real slab in front of you.
4. 4Plumbing and lighting fixtures, which are easier to substitute late.
5. 5Paint, last, because it can be matched to anything.

Picking paint first and then hunting for a tile that matches it is how people spend three weekends in a tile shop and end up with neither.

See the actual material, in the actual room

Get physical samples and look at them in the room they are going into, in morning light and in the evening. A showroom is lit to sell tile. Lay the floor tile out loose before anyone sets it, so the variation across the batch is a decision rather than a surprise.

For stone, go to the yard and choose the slab. The difference between a sample chip and the slab is the whole point of natural stone: quartz or granite.

Order before demolition starts

Lead times, not trades, are what stall jobs. Cabinets, tile, windows and anything imported should be ordered and confirmed before the first wall comes down. A crew waiting on a vanity is a crew you are paying for twice.

The phrase that adds two weeks to a project is we will pick that later.

Keep one schedule everyone can see

A simple selections list with the item, the choice, the supplier, the order date and the expected delivery stops most of the arguments about who was waiting for whom. It is also what tells you, in week two, whether the programme is real.

If you are living on site while this happens, read living in the house during a renovation as well.

The selections that hold up a job

• Cabinets, because they are made to order and everything after them waits.
• Tile, because a discontinued line is discovered at the worst moment.
• Windows and exterior doors, which are the longest lead of all.
• Anything imported or made to measure, including shower glass and stone.

Everything else can be decided while the work runs. Those four decide the programme, so they get chosen, priced and ordered before demolition, not during.